Winter solstice lantern parade: Saturday evening along the Riverwalk

Published: December 27, 2013;Last modified: December 27, 2013 02:23PM

Winter solstice is an astronomical phenomenon which for the Northern Hemisphere occurs in December. The moment of winter solstice is when the sun’s elevation with respect to the North Pole is at its most negative value since the previous December. The hemisphere has its longest night and shortest day around the moment of solstice, with the night within the Arctic being 24 hours long.

Depending on one’s position on the globe, the December solstice usually occurs on the 21st.

A most famous tributes to the winter solstice is Stonehenge.

One of the most well-known archaeological sites in the world, Stonehenge is an arrangement of rocks carefully positioned on a barren ground in southern England. The megalith, which may have been a burial, was built between 3000 B.C. and 2000 B.C., over the course of roughly 1,500 years, in a series of several major phases.

When the sun sets on the winter solstice, its rays align with what are known as the central Altar stone and the Slaughter stone — an event that hundreds of families, tourists, Wiccans, and others visit each year to experience what researchers believe was an important spiritual event for those responsible for creating the monument.